Keeling was completely puzzled: if he had ventured to speak in this sense of Lady Keeling, he knew he would have made a sad mess of it. In his mouth, the same material would have merely expressed itself in a rude light. He tried rather mistakenly to copy the manner that was no manner at all.
‘Ah, I should get a good scolding if I treated Lady Keeling like that,’ he said.
It did not sound right as he said it; he had the perception of that. He perceived, too, that Lord Inverbroom did not pursue the style. Then, presently arriving, they found that the waiting motor contained no impatient Lady Inverbroom, and they stole into the library, at her husband’s desire, so that no news of his coming should reach her, until he had had a quarter of an hour there with his host. Then perhaps she might be told, if Sir Thomas would have the goodness....
Lord Inverbroom sauntered about in the grazing, ambulatory fashion of the book-lover and when his quarter of an hour was already more than spent, he put the volume he was examining back into its place again with a certain air of decision.
‘I should like to express to you by actual word of mouth, Sir Thomas,’ he said, ‘my regret at what happened to-day. I am all the more sorry for it, because I notice that in our rules the landlord of the club is ex officio a member of it. If you only had told me that you had become our landlord, I could have informed you of that, and spared you this annoyance.’
There was no mistaking the sincerity of this, the good feeling of it. Keeling was moved to be equally sincere.
‘I knew that already,’ he said.
Lord Inverbroom looked completely puzzled.
‘Then will you pardon me for asking why you did not take advantage of it, and become a member of the club without any further bother?’
‘Because I wished to know that I was acceptable as a member of the club to the other members,’ said Keeling. ‘They have told me that I am not.’